Three athletes become the first to finish grueling 130-mile Tennessee ultramarathon in FIVE YEARS

Few people have completed grueling Barkley marathons over the years, but three more names were added to the list Friday in Tennessee.

The 100- to 130-mile ultramarathon features five laps of around 20 miles through the mountains at Frozen Head State Park, and the race is approximately 67,000 feet in elevation.

And Aurelien Sanchez, John Kelly and Karel Sabbe managed to finish the mammoth feat this year, becoming the first people to complete the race in five years according to CNN.

What’s more, only 17 people have finished the race since it began in 1986, putting the trio on illustrious territory.

The race was invented by runner Gary Cantrell and inspired by the prison break of James Earl Ray, who assassinated the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

Ray got to within eight miles of Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in eastern Tennessee in just over two days, CNN said, inspiring Cantrell to test the limits of how far people could go in 60 hours.

The competition features some unique rules, as there are no aid stations, GPS, or phones to help with navigation in the mountains.

In addition, there are unmanned checkpoints, and runners must tear out a page from a book corresponding to their bib number and present it at the end of each cycle.

Sánchez is the first French runner to complete the event and was greeted with a hero’s welcome in Toulousewhile spraying a bottle of champagne to celebrate his achievement.

Gary Cantrell (center) addresses the competitors moments before the race in 2007

Kelly, for her part, thanked her followers for their support in Twitter.

“Thank you all for the support, and I hope that some of what we get to discover is a shared experience,” he said.

“Or, if we’re all a bunch of idiots running through the woods, make it at least entertaining.”

The only other time three people completed the race was in 2012, according to Cantrell.